Chennai: ‘Cowshed’ law colleges mushrooming in India are damaging the image of the lawyers, observed the Madras High Court on Thursday.
The first bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice PD Audikesavalu observed orally that it is a big issue that needs to be addressed to preserve the credibility of lawyers.
The bench’s observation came in response to a PIL petition praying for a direction to the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry to nominate retired/sitting judges as members of the disciplinary committees of the council.
The petitioner found fault with the present practice of nominating the other lawyers as the committees’ ‘judges’.
The Bar Council counsel informed the judges, during the course of the argument, it was found after verification that out of the one lakh lawyers in the state, only 67,000 were entitled to practice.
“The judges do not come flying from Venus or Neptune. We come from a pool of lawyers. We are lawyers first and judges next,” the chief justice was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.
Justice Sanjib Banerjee adjourned the case by four weeks and directed the central government and the Bar Council to file status reports on the issue.
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